Carmen has been an advocate within the disability community for more than 25 years. She is CEO/President of the Solutions Marketing Group, a disability marketing agency. Living with spinal cord injury since her junior year of college, Carmen uses her experience as a wheelchair user to lead the development of strategies for companies and government agencies to employ, market to and provide customer services to the Nation’s 56M people with disabilities. Carmen previously served as an appointee of President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2016 at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In that capacity she served as a Senior Advisor in the Office of the Secretary and developed new market opportunities for minority farmers in the rural south. Most recently, she served as the Director of the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization. She was a part of the Board of Directors for the National Spinal Cord Injury Association from 1998 to 2006; and then joined the United Spinal Board in 2010.